The Ravens are interviewing head coaching candidates to replace John Harbaugh, but they also have their eyes on the second-biggest part of their offseason: negotiating another extension with Lamar Jackson.
Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said on Tuesday that he wanted to hammer out another deal with his star quarterback before the start of free agency.
“The urgency of that matters to me because we’ve got free agents and I don’t want to go into free agency with that hanging over our head,” Bisciotti said (via ESPN’s Jamison Hensley). “It’s very hard for [general manager Eric DeCosta] to build a roster when that thing is not settled.” DeCosta concurred, saying that an extension would allow the Ravens to re-sign more of their pending free agents and “potentially go after a couple of big-ticket items.”
Agreeing to a new contract with Jackson would reduce his $72.5MM cap hits in 2026 and 2027, giving the Ravens more money with which they can retool their roster and gear up for another playoff run. The Ravens are willing to restructure Jackson’s contract and add void years to spread his cap hit into the future if the two sides could not strike a deal. Notably, Bisciotti, not DeCosta, laid that option on the table.
The longtime owner also indicated that he hopes for smoother negotiations relative to Jackson’s 2023 talks and even proposed a similar structure with a higher value. In 2023, it took until the week of the draft – long after the window to secure top free agents had closed – to get Jackson to sign at the dotted line. That year, he occupied about $32MM in cap space with his franchise tag, but his 2026 cap hit would be much more restrictive to the team’s other moves. An extension could clear up as much as $40MM, but those savings will be far less useful if the players worth signing have already found new teams.
During the same press conference, Bisciotti revealed (via The Athletic’s Jeff Zrebiec) that some college coaches have reached out to the Ravens regarding their job openings, though the team has not scheduled interviews with any. He indicated that he would be open to interviewing one, but ultimately left that decision up to DeCosta.